I met Caroline through our shared love of ballet.  We both trained at the Tetlow Hulme Ballet Studio based in a tall building on Shoe Lane in the centre of Oxford behind Woolworths on the Cornmarket.  Classes for children in the Royal Academy of Dancing’s graded syllabus were taught on the first floor by the encouraging Miss Lewis, with jangling bracelets and one slightly crooked arm; senior pupils were sent upstairs to the third floor to study the vocational grades of Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced with Mrs Honey, known in the wider ballet world as Beryl Jackson, one of the most feared and exacting of RAD senior examiners.  Her cheerful Australian husband Ian, an ebullient ballet pianist, played for our classes, where musicality was important.  Caroline and I bonded through our experience of these demanding classes as part of a small group of students who were to go on to make careers of ballet as performers, teachers, and one as a Benesh notator.  I remember visiting Caroline’s happy family home in Wallingford, her mother with a teasing twinkle in her eye, full of practical help over cleaning my grubby satin pointe shoes.  We later made our own black net tutu skirts to wear for the RAD advanced exam, a proud achievement.  As more senior students we were co-opted to help on Saturday mornings with the little ones; I was traumatised by trying to teach one small but very stubborn little girl to skip, but Caroline took to teaching like a duck to water.  Our responsibilities as assistants also included making cups of tea for the staff, another valuable skill learned. 
 
Our school never put on shows, the RAD examinations were the primary focus, and we did not do modern, jazz or tap, just ballet; but we did take part in some theatrical productions, including appearing as assorted rabbits, mice and Wild Wooders in a professional Christmas production of Toad of Toad Hall at the Oxford Playhouse, in hot brown fur fabric all-in-ones with interchangeable Velcro attached ears.  Occasional university students joined our classes, and through that contact Caroline and I were called on to contribute to a short ballet interlude in a riotous student production of Offenbach’s operetta La Belle Hélène.  We had recently purchased matching pink jersey crossover tunics which seemed the height of sophistication in contrast to our usual sober black regulation leotards; with the addition of a sequin trim and some spangly eye shadow we felt quite the professionals, and were thrilled to have our first experience of partnered work with some precarious shoulder lifts organised by one of the students, Derek.
 
The Honeys took the decision to go back to Australia – so after our Intermediate exam Caroline and I, already thinking towards auditioning for the Royal Ballet Senior School, moved to the ballet school run by another respected RAD senior examiner June Christian based in a church hall in north Oxford.  We did as many of the senior classes on offer as we could, held after school on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays as well as Saturday mornings; and Caroline would stay over at my home after class on Friday nights.  Miss Christian’s mother used to keep the hall clean; always bubbly and cheerfully cheeky, Caroline used to call her “Mrs Mop”.  Around this time I remember us going together to the cinema on a Saturday afternoon to watch the Royal Ballet in Frederick Ashton’s The Tales of Beatrix Potter, an unforgettable and thoroughly enjoyable outing.  We auditioned for the Royal Ballet School in the spring of 1972; I was accepted onto the dancers’ course and Caroline, her lifelong vocation as a teacher already apparent, won a place on the three-year teachers’ course, and we both went to London to study that September.  Despite being in the same building our schedules and paths diverged from that point, and I saw much less of the dear friend with whom I had so closely shared the previous precious years and experiences of dancing.
 
When I think of Caroline I think of her vibrant sunny personality, always generous, loving and full of teasing and laughter; as a dancer of slim and streamlined physique with admirable neatness and energy.  Many years later I came to her school in Park Street to teach a choreographic workshop for some of her young pupils; I remember a very happy afternoon, seeing how she enthused and supported her students, filming their dances with a small camera to be able to show them what they had done, impressive as a teacher of warmth and nurturing instinct, embracing the new to give the next generation the best educational experience. 
 
Susie Crow
 
6th August 2020